


Living

by 4RU



Category: Borderlands
Genre: AU, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 15:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4568940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4RU/pseuds/4RU
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angel is starting to get the hang of living.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living

She’s in a wheelchair. With the eridium supply limited down to the bare necessity to keep her alive, her body just doesn’t have the energy to fly consistently any more. Her bones and body are too undernourished for walking. She’s put on some weight, but not much. Progress is slow, but it’s progress all the same. Most days, Angel can’t even summon the upper body strength to move herself. Exhaustion settles in too quickly. Her arms ache. On those days she sits by a window, in front of an uplink terminal. The sunlight feels so warm and inviting on her skin, and the ECHOnet has never ceased to bore her.

Truthfully, Angel doesn’t want more. Jack is dead and gone; Mordecai and Lilith might have been worried considering her relation to him, but the thing is that Jack was never her father. Fathers are kind, loving, supportive. Fathers do not imprison their daughters against their will, do not abuse them for power and profit. Jack was her parent, but never her father. How could she feel anything but relief that never again will she wake to a room she cannot leave, or feel the bite of a metal collar against her throat?

Yet here she is, with a life left to live and no idea where to begin. She has her freedom. She has her life. She can breathe air that has not passed through twenty-seven filters. She can eat food not regulated by intense dietary restrictions and nutritional intake. She can walk- not very far or for very long, but she can walk where she wants to go. The control over her life has been broken, has been given back to her.

How telling it is that one of the first things Angel did when she sat down for her first meal with the Vault Hunters was yell every bad word she knew or could think of to the ceiling as loud as her voice let her. And for no other reason than because she could. Certainly it didn’t help that they encouraged her (especially Salvador), but Angel had still smiled and laughed herself to tears by the sheer rush of it all. But they all laughed with her, even Zer0 who did nothing more than contribute an “LOL”, or Maya who tried to hide her smiles behind her fingers. Moxxi didn’t terribly mind the disruption, at least; then again Moxxi is incredibly lenient when it comes to Angel, more so than just about anyone else that walks into her establishment.

Still, Angel knows not what to do, other than to live. And so she does. With each breath she pulls into her lungs, with every small amount of eridium that sinks into her veins. There are things and experiences she’s never thought she could have, but dreamed about all the same. Movies to watch unrestricted. Music to listen to. Books to read. Games to play. Places to drive. She’s felt rain on her skin for the first time since she can remember. She’s been driven through the Dust. She’s met just about everyone she’s ever spoken to over the ECHOnet in person, and then some she hasn’t. Even Athena, who never visits Sanctuary if she can help it, who Angel first learned about years ago when she encoded a completely serious message into an Atlas male enhancement commercial, has indulged her presence on occasion.

And then there is Gaige. Gaige, who had been the one to keep her alive, who was the most invested in her well-being, who had been absolutely distraught when they first met face to face. Angel’s miniature eridium injector was Gaige’s masterpiece, as was the modification to her neural implants that allowed for integration with just about all technology, and the personal uplink she stuck in Deathtrap for when Angel has the strength to phaseshift into him. Gaige introduces her to music, to games, to movies – and while the mechromancer’s tastes are questionable Angel cannot deny enjoying most if not all of the content.

In the span of a few weeks, Gaige has become her best friend. Her closest friend. They hold sleepovers and talk about how attractive certain fictional characters are. They debate politics and technology. They wrap up together in blankets and shove pillows in one another’s faces all the time. When Gaige settles next to her, she always makes sure to keep to Angel’s left side so as not to accidentally hurt her with her prosthetic arm.

Therefore it shouldn’t be as much of a surprise when Angel realizes she has developed a crush. But she has and she is torn between being nervous and so very excited. And maybe one day Angel will have the courage to tell her, but for now she simply enjoys the sensation of her gut twisting into knots, of what having someone she can be completely honest and unrestricted with is like.

It’s a part of living, after all, and Angel knows for sure that she’s starting to get the hang of it.


End file.
